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Once upon a Mistake
A Character Redemption Arc requires its victim to go through a stage of indignity before they get to the story’s comfortable conclusion. And so it was that I found myself there—some time ago now, but...
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The Crash and Burn of Thus and Therefore…and then not.
Imagine heat clawing your face as your custom-made home burns to the ground. You want to close your eyes against the sting of smoke coming from the house-shaped hole, but horror locks them wide. You’d...
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The Little Blue Robot (The post I was—honestly—medically prescribed to write)
I’ve been medically prescribed blog-writing. I’m not even kidding. A statement like that probably needs backstory. So here’s a story, because stories are fun—and in this case, kind of meta: Once upon...
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Photomanipulation: Surreal Desert
I understand, now, why people say it’s hard to stop getting tattoos once you start. Because that’s what I felt while I was making a surreal desert scene using photomanipulation, using only images...
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How to Acquire New Tastes (by force)
Taste is a fickle thing. It makes critics of us all. I knew a guy who’d make fun of me for talking about the different flavours I could detect across a range of coffee beans. He thought I was making...
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The Self-Restraint Test 2
Six months ago I put the boys through the Stanford marshmallow experiment, using a biscuit. (Perhaps my recurring readers will remember it, from a post I made in June.) It seemed an appropriate time...
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Why are Werewolves so Popular?
The fascination with werewolves, it seems to me, has overtaken that of vampires in modern popular culture. Werewolves are the new and exciting subject of sexual allure. (Or possibly the old and...
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The Design with the Shock Factor
Would you touch a magazine that was printed with HIV+ blood? A book printed in blood sounds like the purview of the macabre. But it can also be a pretty amazing design project, and the HIV+ element...
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Book Covers: The Whys behind the Whats (Reasons for Design Decisions)
I design ways of communicating a message visually, for tangible outputs. That’s my job, summarily. It so happens that, while a contractor, I’ve usually done this with logos. Branding a company (or...
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How to read signs when you can’t read words (A look at Visual Communication...
Imagine what you would do if you woke up one day and couldn’t read. Letters on shop signs were nonsense to you. The words of your favourite novel were inane markings, no more rational than scratches...
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Networking: the Dark Side of Freelancing
Freelancers work in isolation. I’m not in a studio, or an office block. I’m not rubbing shoulders with other designers. There’s just me. Usually, I love it that way. It’s comfortable. But it does...
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To Blog or Not to Blog? (My Examination of Motive)
I might quit blogging. It might be a good thing. A healthy thing. There have been a variety of reasons for my blogging, across the timeline, but right now there’s no other reason than this: I’ve...
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The appeal behind Apocalypse and Dystopia in fiction
Dystopian worlds are braced within a malevolent system, apocalyptic worlds are breaking apart, and post-apocalyptic ones are picking up the pieces. They’re all hell on earth. And they’re all...
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How to read what a job ad’s not saying
Most people understand that when a real-estate advertisement promotes a property as ‘ideal for first-home owners’, they mean ‘nobody would live here if they could afford somewhere else’. And when...
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Poem: Without a Name (A Response to Angsty Heartbreak Poems)
I don’t always agree with with Past-Me. She made some stupid choices, and she thought some stupid things. (Like 5ive being better than the Backstreet Boys. She probably based that opinion more on her...
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Your Memories are Lying to You
The grass, apparently, is always greener wherever we’re not. I haven’t lived in Queensland, Australia, for almost 10 years now. But I remember it fondly. Especially when winter hits, and in New...
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Book Review: Lexicon by Max Barry
A thrilling novel has to have the right balance of plausibility. If it tips too far in either direction, the thrill is replaced with either revulsion or ridicule. Too much plausibility, and it becomes...
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What is Christian Fiction?
Every public library I know of has a designation of ‘Christian Fiction’ among their genre sets. Yet ‘Christian Fiction’ seems to be a collection of characteristics that are vague and varying. And a...
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Learning to Cook by Watching People Who Know
I have many skills. I know how to dance the chorus choreography to 5ive’s ‘Baby, When the Lights Go Out’. I know how to take a blood sample from a Rhodesian Ridgeback. I know how to burp on command....
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Learning NZSL in a real live classroom
I finally did one of the things I’d scheduled for the elusive ‘One Day’: I went to a New Zealand Sign Language class. A real one. With a real live teacher and real live people. People who looked just...
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